My site, archivalproject, has moved permanently to Tumblr. Please see more recent happenings there. In order to create a complete archive, I’ve brought back this old blog.
Now Found on Tumblr
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The True Meaning of Life
We are visitors on this planet. We are here for ninety, a hundred years at the very most. During that period we must try to do something good, something useful with our lives. Try to be at peace with yourself and help others share that peace. If you contribute to other people’s happiness, you will find the true goal, the true meaning of life.
- The Dalai Lama
Source: Awakening The Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World, by Lama Surya Das.
Thoughts of Death to Appreciate Life
If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.
- Muriel Spark
Learn to die and you shall live,
for there shall be none who learn to truly live
who have not learned to die.
- Unknown
Source: Awakening The Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World, by Lama Surya Das.
Follow Your Bliss
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain
Source: The Hedonism Handbook: Mastering The Lost Arts of Leisure and Pleasure, by Michael Flocker
The Holter Monitor Hasn’t Changed
Because I require more testing in an attempt to properly diagnose my “irritable heart,” I have been wearing a Holter Monitor for the past 22 hours. A Holter Monitor is a portable device used to continuously monitor, via a series of electrodes attached to the chest and abdomen, the electrical activity of the heart for 24 hours or more.
The one that I am currently wearing looks like this: Continue reading
A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants
I just finished reading the book, A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants: A Memoir by Jaed Coffin. A touching memoir about what we all are, at one point or another, searching for – the meaning and purpose of our life – the search for enlightenment. His writing is full of gritty truth and self reflection. A wonderful read.
Included in the book is a translation of a beautiful poem, a chant to soothe wild elephants that were once living in the forest. They led a happy and peaceful life until one day they were captured by the king’s hunters and taken to the palace to become part of the royal herd. The elephants, as one can only imagine, were not happy with their new arrangement. They stomped and thrashed, trying to escape. The only thing that could calm them was this special prayer, chanted by the monks of the kingdom.
Continue reading
Tumbling on Tumblr
According to this post, written back on November 18th, I said that I was back to blogging. However, looking at this blog you would think otherwise. Well, I am in fact blogging, as I said I would be doing, just not here. I’m doing it over at Tumblr on this tumblelog.
While Tumblr lacks many of the standard blog functionalities, such as user comments, categories and tags, I really like its simplified method of posting different types of content – text, links, quotes, photos, audio and video. I also like the fact that I don’t have to be tethered to my computer in order to post new content. With Tumblr, I can submit a new post of any content type from my iPhone (well, except audio) on the go. I like that. And for some reason, using Tumblr I don’t feel the pressure that I feel with WordPress to write a lengthy, intelligent, useful, informative type of post. I just post whatever I feel speaks of me, or to me, about my interests in life.
For now, I probably won’t be updating this blog with new posts that often or hardly at all. Please go to my tumblelog to see and catch up on all of my action. One day it may replace this WordPress blog all together, or one day I may decide to come back to WordPress but post as if I’m still tumbling on Tumblr.
